How blockchain will revolutionise the way we interact with each other
Many people know blockchain as a technology that powers bitcoin, but this wan’t his original idea, blockchain can do so much more. Blockchain is a distributed ledger system that can record anything from financial transactions, land titles and medical records.
Now, many of you might be thinking we already have technologies like mysql, cassandra and many other, then what makes blockchain different from them?
Let’s break down, how blockchain technology will revolutionise the way we interact with each other.
Reason 1: Track and Restore data
In the current world, maintaining a clean and trustable data is important, to make it possible blockchain store information in blocks that are linked together in chronological manner to form a single line(a chain of blocks). If you want to change the information in the recorded blocks, then you have to form a new block and that block will be linked at the end showing a changed to b at a particular data and time.
Already familiar with this kind of process?
It is because blockchain is based on the centuries old-method of a general financial ledger. For example: Let’s say there is a dispute between Alice and Bob over who owns this house, because blockchain uses the ledger method, then there will be a entry in the ledger showing John first owns the house in 1920. When john sold the house to Dustin in 1940, a new block(entry) is added in the ledger and so on. Every change of ownership can be seen by a new entry in ledger, right up until Alice bought it from her father in 2010. Alice, is the current owner and we can see that history in the ledger.
Now, here is when things get interesting. Unlike our old-ledger method, a book or a database file like mysql or something else. Blockchain is designed to be decentralised and distributed across a large network. This distributed system reduces the ability to alter data.
Reason 2: Trust in the data
To make data trustable, few things needed to be run before the block can be added to the chain. First, the previous block cryptographic puzzle needs to be decoded before creating a puzzle. The computer that solves the puzzle, shares the solution to all the other systems on the network, which is defined as Proof of work. The system in the network, then verifies the proof of work, and if it is correct, then block will be added to the chain.
The combination of these complicated maths puzzle and then verification by many other computers makes every block in the chain reliable and trustworthy.
Reason 3: No middle man
Nowadays, Every business need a middle man like to register a company, to make all the legal documents, businesses need a lawyer who can guide them in this process and because of these middleman our work is becomes possible.
If Alice, house information is stored in blockchain, she could cut out her lawyer(the middleman) who will confirm her information with Bob. As, we have seen in previous reason, that all blocks are verified before adding to the chain and can’t be tampared with. So Alice, can simply show Bob her land information that is secured on the blockchain and this will save a considerable amount of time and money by cutting out the middle man.
This type of trusted peer-to-peer interaction will revolutionise the way we verify, transact and access the data with one another. The blockchain is a technology, not a single network, there are many ways out there in which you can implement this.
